Post by cecil on Apr 25, 2008 18:39:01 GMT -5
Carding needed for carding the gill covers and spacers that go between the gills. Screen is 1/8 inch hardware cloth (garden mesh available at any hardware store.) Plastic is Wasco's poly plastic or some plastic I have left over from an aquaculture project. I keep all the fin and gill carding in a manila envelope for each species and a particular size. It's alot faster and more economical than cutting new ones every time you mount a fish.
Fish head with cheeks filled with filler and allowed to set up. T-pin was temporary to hold the head in place when lining up the skin on the commercial manikin.
At this point the fish mouth was packed temporarily with paper towel and wires were driven into the top of the head and the fleshy under part of the head to hold every thing where it needed to be. I use a small hammer for this. Sometimes you can predrill a small hole in head to get the wire more easily started.
For a more pleasing fish one wants to line up the top of the head with the body (not drooping) and of course you want the both sides of the gill covers evenly spaced, which is the reason for the wire in the fleshy underside.
Note: I use pieces of a wire coathanger with one end sharpened on a grinder for this but of course just about any wire will work. For smaller fish all that may be required are larger upholstery pins or even T-pins. For really big fish like northerns and muskies I pick up political campaige signs and use the wire from those. I usually wait until the campaigns are over and sometimes no one ever removes them anyway.
This shows the piece of hardware cloth on the inside of the gill cover. If you hang up your fish to dry from the rafters like I do it's best to hand the fish upside down at an angle to hold the gill spacers in place.
And this shows the plastic on the outside. Both are sandwiched together with jumbo paper clips. Be sure to use enough paper clips. If you skimp there you gill cover may warp on you as it dries.
Fish ready to dry with wires in place, gill covers carded, and spacers between gills. In regards to spacers I double the hardware cloth for bass that have a large flared mouth, and I use single pieces for fish like smallmouth and other fish that are not as flared.
To free up my hands and make it easier to card gill covers I have screwed in a piece of furrowing strip (what I screw on to my fish to hang them from the rafters) above my doorway to the shop. The furrowing strip has a drywall screw in the end of it.
The fish ( in this case a white crappie) that also has a furrowing strip attached to it is hung from the above furrowing strip. The fish stick has a hole in the end that fits over the drywall screw.